


light carries on endlessly (even after death)

by theartofbeinganerd



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: A Light at the End of the Tunnel if You Will, Angst, But There's Also Hope, F/M, Oh There's Angst, Season six speculation, Spoilers for 5x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-08 22:11:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14703465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theartofbeinganerd/pseuds/theartofbeinganerd
Summary: A Season Six spec fic, which is all I can really say without spoiling anything from the finale.Angst with a hopeful ending though!*MAJOR SPOILERS FOR 5X22





	light carries on endlessly (even after death)

**Author's Note:**

> Come share in my pain, everyone! This is me attempting to wade through the finale and my conflicting feelings about it to try and figure out what I want to see, and what could happen in Season Six.
> 
> It is also past two am, and I am literally just walking emotion, so I’m sorry if this isn’t very polished.
> 
> Title is, obviously, taken from Saturn by Sleeping At Last. Yes, I went there.
> 
> *One last time, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR 5X22!!

_“I’m well aware that I’m the luckiest man on any planet…_ ”

A sound that is somewhere between a sob and a laugh leaves Jemma’s lips just before she presses her free hand to her mouth to muffle anymore cries, her other hand tightening around Mack’s phone as the video of her wedding to Fitz plays for the umpteenth time on its screen.

In a way, it’s almost exactly like how she’d watched her birthday video over and over on Maveth, just to hear his voice, to see his face.

But, back then, _she’d_ been the one lost somewhere in space, and he’d been safe at home, on Earth.

Oh, how she wishes that that was the case again.

 _“…I’m so happy to pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride…_ ”

Coulson’s voice spills out of the speakers as the view on Mack’s phone shifts to filming her and Fitz as they share their first kiss as husband and wife, and she can see that they’re both smiling into it, exuding overwhelming joy at finally being married. They pull back and beam at each other, she wipes away a tear, and…

And the video ends.

Just like that, it’s all over; their happiness, their wedding, their life together –

 _Over_.

Tears blur her eyes as she finally locks Mack’s phone and sets it aside, curling up on the bed in her bunk on the Zephyr and pressing her cheek against the cool steel of the wall beside it. Her arms fold around her bent knees, but it does little to chase away the chill that has a shiver racing down her spine. However, she knows that nothing but the warmth and safety of his arms can rid her of the emptiness inside of living without him.

And, she _knows_ that she will feel it again, that they’re currently flying the Zephyr through space to try and find Fitz, to bring him back to her, but…

But, she still mourns him, because how can she _not_?

It will be Fitz, of course, and she will love him with every fiber of her being and she will be his wife and bear his children and spend the rest of her days with him –

But that time that she spent with Fitz, their wedding, their struggles to save the planet and the way that they began to break and fall apart while doing so, it will never leave her. She will always have those memories, but he _won’t_ , and perhaps that’s what she’s struggling most to reconcile.

She will always remember the utter happiness of wearing a white dress and watching Fitz walk toward her, of his trembling fingers sliding her ring onto her left hand. She will always remember finally being able to call him her husband, and the way that she would lie awake at night and trace his ring with her fingers, biting back a smile because the world was rapidly crashing down around them but she had _married_ her best friend, so everything couldn’t be _all_ bad.

And, she will always remember the panic of nearly losing Coulson, the sharp and almost painful relief of him _not_ being gone, not yet, and the breath that she could breathe when she saw Mack step into the lab, alive and well.

She will always remember him delivering the news that Fitz…that he… And she will remember the world slowing to a crawl around her, all sound fading into a dull ringing as she crashes to her knees, and the way that she hadn’t even noticed Mack rushing across the room to try and hold her up until she was weeping in his arms.

She will always remember seeing Fitz’s broken and lifeless body laid out on a table, and she will remember sobbing into his shirt (the shirt that he wore on the day of their wedding), now covered in dirt and his dried blood. She will remember his cold skin beneath her fingertips as she caresses his stubbled cheek and she will remember pressing one last, tear-soaked kiss to his still lips.

She will _always_ remember.

And Jemma knows that even when she has Fitz back, safe and more importantly, _alive_ in her arms, it will all still be there. The crushing feeling of losing her whole world isn’t going to go away so easily.

But, he will be there to help her through it, and it’s enough of a consolation.

“Simmons?”

Startling at the sound of Mack’s voice, Jemma hastily sits up and wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand, offering him a weak smile. “Did you want your phone back? I’m sorry.”

“No, no, that’s not it,” Mack assures her, with a small smile of his own. “We think we may have found something.”

Jemma’s heart leaps almost violently in her chest, and her hands begin to shake as she hops off of the bed, afraid to get her hopes up too high. “What is it? Is it a ship? Have you tried making contact?”

Mack chuckles as he accepts his phone from her and slides it into his pocket, gently leading her out of the bunk and down the halls, toward the control center. “Yes, it’s a ship, and Daisy’s pretty sure that it looks like the one Fitz and Enoch had in the future. We’re trying to make contact now.”

“Good,” Jemma breathes, clasping her hands together to try and calm their trembling, and it presses the metal of her ring into her skin.

The others are all gathered in control when they get there, and she can see tension in them, the fear of hoping too hard to be let down; it’s already been a handful of weeks without any luck, and though they’ve all promised to go to the ends of the galaxy for Fitz, it’s obvious that it’s wearing on them all.

Finally, an incoming transmission pops up on the screen, soon followed by a familiar voice, “ _Welcome, Agents of SHIELD, I am pleased to hear that you were successful in your efforts to save the earth. I shall board your ship shortly – and yes, I can confirm that Leopold Fitz is with me_.”

A collective breath of relief is released in the room as the transmission ends, and Jemma has to close her eyes and grip the back of a nearby chair to steady herself, lest she be swept up in her overwhelming emotions.

They are all anxious as they wait for Enoch to dock his ship on the Zephyr, and then while they unload the cryofreeze chamber from it. Jemma has to suck in a sharp breath when she sees Fitz inside of it through the little window, tears immediately filling her eyes at the sight of him, once more lying still with his eyes closed, just like the last time that she saw him.

But, then Enoch sets the chamber to unfreeze, and then Fitz’s eyes open just like she’d desperately wished that they would weeks ago and he gasps for air and Jemma has never been so relieved to hear something so simple that her knees grow weak and she has to clutch at Mack’s arm where he stands beside her to remaining standing.

Fitz clearly sees Enoch first, where he’s standing beside the now open chamber, and he asks shakily, “Is it time?”

A part of Jemma had feared never hearing his voice through anything but a video again (for the second time in her life), and so the words, despite their simplicity, have her biting her lip to hold back a sob.

Then, Fitz manages to push himself up into a sitting position, and he blinks when he notices that he’s surrounded by their team on the Zephyr. And then, his eyes lock on Jemma’s, and she feels as though all of the breath has been knocked straight from her lungs.

“Hi Fitz,” she whispers, and her voice is trembling, nearly breaking, and the tears finally spill over onto her cheeks.

He sucks in a sharp breath, looking a bit franticly from face to face, before settling once more on hers. “What – I…”

“Easy, Turbo,” Mack says gently, and Jemma can hear the emotion that he’s trying to hide in his voice as well. “It’s alright, we’ve broken the loop, and we stopped what Robin predicted was going to happen to the planet. Everything’s okay.”

Fitz blinks another couple of times, dragging his fingers through his hair and absently accepting a hand from Enoch to climb out of the chamber. Once he’s standing, he leans on him a bit, clearly weak from being frozen for even just a few months. “ _Wow_ , I… That’s…that’s good. Good. Though, I was on my way to save all of you.” He offers them a weak little grin, and Jemma can’t quite take it, and she has to look away and close her eyes before she collapses from the pain of it all once more.

A silence fills the room, and she just barely hears footsteps on the metal floor of the Zephyr, before a calloused palm that she would know anywhere curves along her cheek and she can’t quite hold back the sob because she’d thought that she’d never feel his touch again.

“ _Jemma_ …” he whispers, and another sob passes her lips, tears falling down her face and no doubt landing on his skin. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“We’ll give you guys some space to talk,” Daisy offers, and Jemma cracks her eyes open to see the others taking a couple of steps away, drifting off toward other parts of the Zephyr (though they can’t quite seem to take their eyes away from Fitz, and she can’t quite blame them). Though, Daisy lingers, hesitating before giving Fitz a brief hug and telling him lowly, “We should…we should talk, sometime. When you’re up for it. There are…well, there are some things that we need to talk about that need a resolution.”

Fitz obviously doesn’t understand, but he agrees regardless, “Yeah, okay.”

Then, he reaches down to grasp Jemma’s hand in his, and she realizes her error at the exact moment that his eyes grow wide and shoot down toward her left hand, which is now cradled within his right. “Fitz…” she starts, but he’s not listening, lifting her hand to hold between them and inspecting her wedding ring.

He pales visibly at the sight of it, his eyes darting from it to Jemma’s face and back several times before he says, “Oh god, how long was I _gone_?”

“It’s not what you think,” Jemma assures him immediately, shaking her head and lifting her free hand to curl both around his, promising once more, “it’s not, Fitz.”

“She’s right, Turbo,” Mack tells him.

“Yes,” Elena agrees.

Daisy nods and encourages, “Just talk to her, alright?”

And though Fitz still looks horrified, he nods absently and allows Jemma to lead him away from the others and toward the bunks instead, though she does glance back to mouth a ‘thank you’ to them for their support.

It is only once they’re in the bunk that they’ve always used as their own while on the Zephyr and perched on the edge of the mattress that he states almost numbly, “You’re married.”

“Yes,” Jemma answers, but then she corrects, “no, _we’re_ married.”

And then, it all comes spilling out, and she tells him _everything_ ; about his trip to the future, their reunion, their engagement, returning to the past, their wedding, Deke being their grandson, fighting with their friends as they fought to save the planet, and finally, about his death.

At first, Fitz simply sits in stunned silence, his mouth hanging open slightly as he struggles to process the overload of information. She tries to give him that time that he needs, and tries to hide the sobs that are once more building up at reliving everything as she shared it with him, but her shoulders begin to shake, and there’s no way that he doesn’t notice.

He inhales a short, sharp breath, and then his arms are wrapped around her and his lips are pressed to the top of her head, and he whispers into her hair over and over, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry that you had to go through that, I’m so sorry, Jemma.”

And though she’s been comforted by every single one of their friends in the wake of Fitz’s death, as she cries in his arms, it is the first time that she truly feels a measure of comfort, of calm, of belief that things will look up eventually.

They stay like that for some time, and he rubs her back and presses kisses to her skin, but some part of Jemma is still so broken, so consumed with grief even though he is right there, in front of her. For one, horrifying moment, she’s even afraid that she may never be able to be with Fitz without the conflicting emotions of happiness and sorrow waging war inside of her.

But, then Fitz admits quietly, “You know, I was…was plannin’ on proposing the next time I saw you. Thought about it a lot and spent quite a bit of time trying to find the perfect words, but…well, it seems as though I don’t have to now – I beat myself to it.”

Amazingly, it pulls a soft laugh from her lips, and she leans back far enough to catch his eye. As he reaches up to tenderly wipe away the tears on her cheeks with his thumb, she replies with a little smile, “Well, _technically_ , I proposed to you. You _said_ that you proposed first, but since Kasius had taken my hearing with that implant, I couldn’t hear it.”

Fitz perks up a bit then, asking hopefully, “Yeah?” But, it’s only a moment before he deflates slightly, mumbling, “Well, it probably won’t be as good as yours was, anyway.”

Jemma snorts a bit at that through her lingering tears, telling him point blank, “I said ‘marry me, Fitz’.”

For a moment, he seems to be dazed, perhaps by hearing the words ‘marry me’ from her mouth, but then he shakes himself and chuckles. “Well, that’s a very Jemma Simmons proposal, you know – straightforward and to the point, as always; I was lucky to have gotten it.”

She gives another little laugh at that, and even rolls her eyes (she will gladly accept hearing his silly little jokes and teases for the rest of her life, as long as he is _alive_ to make them), but then grasps his hand and gives it a small squeeze, prompting, “Tell me. I want to hear it.”

Fitz glances up at her, clearly gauging the truth of her words and her emotional state, before he clears his throat and begins speaking, “I – I’ve realized something, recently. The universe can’t stop us…”

And, as Fitz finally speaks the words of his proposal to her, they both shed some more tears, and Jemma understands that she will always have the memories and carry losing Fitz with her, yes, but she also understands that she hasn’t really lost him. She’s willing to start over with him, to try again, and she resolves not to let what happened stop her from living her life with him

After all, she knows that the future ahead of them is a beautiful one, and though it’s still going to take her some time to heal (with him by her side, of course, helping her through it), she cannot wait to share it with him.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on tumblr - I'm theartofbeinganerd over there as well!


End file.
